Dear Sarah

I would have written a letter to you a few days ago when we were writing about "our favorite internet friend." Except that we're not really friends anymore.

When I first "met" you online, I immediately took a liking to you. You were so full of information and you taught me so much about birth and breastfeeding and various parenting strategies. Your knowledge is so expansive that I was immediately drawn to you. I looked up to you and admired you. You are organized and smart and a fantastic mother and you always look beautiful and put together.

I still don't know what you ever saw in me. We are as different as night and day. I am an Atheist. You are a Christian, and what most would call a "fundamentalist." You take the Bible literally. You are extremely conservative. Our political views are on two opposite sides of the spectrum. We have absolutely no similar life views outside of pregnancy and breastfeeding, and even those similarities have become blurred as I've changed.

The entire world is black and white to you. You've said as much. For me, especially now, everything is a shade of gray.

We've argued about everything. We've been angry and hurt each other's feelings and said things we didn't mean. I was the worst with this. You'll take your time to respond, days or weeks, even. I, however, will immediately strike back with whatever floats to the top of my mind first.

We've been up and down and up and down throughout the years. On the upswing, we have sent each other stockings full of treats and gifts at Christmastime and have mailed birthday cards. We have spoken for hours on the phone. We instant messaged every night during our mutual pregnancies.

Your religious views got the best of me. They maddened me and frustrated me. I always felt like you were trying to convince me or something I would never be convinced of. It felt like a one sided friendship in which my views would never be contemplated, but yours were something I was supposed to take into consideration.

For a long time, I felt like the only reason you had befriended me was to lead me to salvation in Jesus Christ. I wish you could understand how fraudulent and hurtful that feels.

And then, the catalyst: You lost your fourth child to a very early miscarriage. I was sad for you, so very sad. I listened to you cry on the phone and you called me nearly every day, devastated. I wanted to be there for you completely, but as the days turned to weeks and then months, and you were still not recovering, I became impatient. You had kept the baby in your freezer and waited for the perfect time for a burial. You chose a name, even though it was too early for the sex to be determined and you treated this failed pregnancy as a real child that had died. I halfway understood it, but for me, it was a 6 week clump of cells. It was the dream of a baby, not a baby itself. I slowly pulled away from you. I felt like you were all doom and gloom and at the time, I was trying to conceive MY fourth child. You didn't seem to be "getting over it" and there was nothing I could do or say to make it better and I was frustrated. I walked away from the friendship at that point. I'm so sorry for that.

When stillbirth brushed past my life, the wheels in my head began to turn and I saw your situation in crystal clear light. You had a son. You lost your son. Years later, you still miss him acutely.

I immediately emailed you and told you how sorry I was for my behavior. Sorry that I wasn't there for you in your grief like I should have been.

You eventually responded. You said that you still loved me, but that we were toxic for each other. You then told me that in order to rebuild trust, you must do more than shake hands and agree that something from the past was a mistake.

You told me that I was forgiven. But am I really? Because it doesn't feel that way.

Am I only forgiven because that's what Jesus would do?